


All Is Well

by bactaqueen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: 5 + 1 Fic, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Bucky Barnes is a Good Man, F/M, M/M, Pining, female character mentioned only, female characters appear briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 12:45:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2270223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bactaqueen/pseuds/bactaqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Bucky wanted Steve and one time he did something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Is Well

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Recognizable characters belong to their respective owners. No profit is earned and no infringement is intended.
> 
> Author’s Note: Because disappointme asked. Also, Bucky doesn't think Sharon is good for Steve. (Not that Sharon isn't good just that she isn't good for Steve.)

_1934_

 

Bucky sits on Steve's bed, watching Steve get dressed for his first date. His tongue is heavy in his mouth with the things he wants to say and can't. Steve looks healthier and happier than Bucky has seen him all year, maybe ever--Steve deserves this, with the year he's had and the year he's bound to have. Mrs. Rogers hasn't been doing so well and Bucky heard her tell his ma that it was TB. Bucky watches Steve try to decide between a blue wool sweater with patched elbows and an unfashionable gray tie as he stands in front of the little mirror over the pitcher and basin in the corner of his bedroom.

"What do you think, Buck?" he finally asks, turning.

Bucky chokes. _Don't do it, Steve, she doesn't mean it._ He forces it down. Steve might hate him later--he'd bear that. But he's not going to kill Steve's happiness now. No matter what he heard, no matter what he knows.

"It's going to be chilly tonight," he says instead of _she's only doing this on a dare_. "Wear the sweater. And take a jacket."

Steve rolls his eyes and turns away, but he tosses the tie back on top of his bureau and pulls the sweater over his head. His hair is a mess, tousled and sticking up, and Bucky's fingers itch to run through it, to smooth it back into place, to frame Steve's jaw and be his first kiss so he knows what it feels like to be kissed by someone who loves him.

He is seventeen years old and he knows he's all wrong. He is seventeen years old and he isn't kind enough to lie to himself.

He is seventeen years old and he is in love with his best friend.

 

 

_1937_

 

Bucky has seen the way Steve's eyes slide to Rebecca and the way his ears go read at the tips. He's seen the way Rebecca looks at him and the way her blue eyes--eyes the same as his--light up when she thinks no one will notice. Bucky has seen because he's been looking.

He is twenty and he has made peace with his wanting.

He is twenty and he has resigned himself to always wanting and never having.

He smiles when he catches sight of Rebecca. He sweeps the cap off his head and wipes his hands ineffectively on his dungarees.

"You're late," he says when she's close enough, and even though if she'd been any later he wouldn't have gotten to eat, there's no frustration in his voice. He's grateful she comes at all.

She blushes, and Bucky is struck once again by how grown-up his little sister is. Not so little anymore--she's eighteen this year. Rebecca hands over the sack lunch and when he drops to sit right there on the pile of steel that will become bulkhead, she smooths her skirt and sits with him.

"I took some to Steve, too."

Bucky bumps her shoulder with his as he opens lunch. A sandwich, an apple, more than some fellas he works with get and he's once more grateful for his family's good fortune. "You're sweet on him."

Rebecca stares down at her hands for a few silent moments before she looks up at him, challenge in her eyes and in the set of her jaw. She says, "He's so nice to me, Buck. Fellas aren't nice, you know?"

Bucky's heart aches. He knows. He takes a too-big bite of the sandwich. He knows how great Steve is--and he knows what a colossal horse's ass he can be, too. He still can't blame her for being sweet on the guy.

"He's a dumb punk," he says, because Steve is his best friend and that's what he's supposed to say. He shoots Rebecca a sly look from the corner of his eye and watches her look down at her hands again, watches the furrow of her brow as she struggles with how to respond to that. He swallows the mouthful he's got and the lump of feeling in his throat with it and adds, "You could do worse."

Steve may be skinny and sick and his mouth may be too big and he may not know how to back down from a fight he can't win, but he'd be good to Rebecca.

She laughs. "Dad will never go for it."

Bucky shrugs. He's gone with a few girls whose dads wouldn't approve of him, either. "So don't tell him. What he don't know won't hurt." He winks.

Steve wouldn't get Becca in trouble. Not without taking care of it. Bucky believes that.

It makes him a little sick.

Becca smiles like they're sharing a secret.

They are.

 

 

_1941_

 

The line for the recruiting station is out the door and down the block and Bucky's heart seizes up. "Steve, no."

"I gotta do my part, Buck." Steve shoots him a look, cool and sharp and entirely disapproving. "So do you."

Bucky shakes his head. He feels like it'll float away or maybe like he'll lose his breakfast on the sidewalk. "I _am_ doing my part." What does Steve _think_ he's doing twelve hours a day at the Navy yard? "You can find something else."

Steve looks straight ahead. "It's not enough."

Bucky scowls. Fire heats him up, face and chest and arms, and he wants to punch Steve square on that stubborn ugly jaw of his. "Fine," he bites out, and doesn't think of the broken heart he's going to give his ma or the tears on his sisters' faces or what his dad's going to have to say about this. He steps into line behind Steve because he will follow Steve anywhere, no matter what, even if he wants to die in a trench in Europe just like his dad. "Fine."

The Army takes him. They don't take Steve.

Bucky is relieved. Now Steve has to stay. Then his orders come, and he's going away, first stop Camp Lehigh and after that across an ocean and face to face with scared boys just like him on the wrong side of right.

Without Steve.

In trenches in Italy, under bombs and bullets, he's glad Steve is safe at home. Away from this. From all of this.

But he still misses him. He is twenty-four years old and he might die tomorrow and as he sleeps with a rifle in his hands and dreams about a blond boy from Brooklyn, it doesn't matter that he's all wrong.

 

 

_1943_

 

Bucky is twenty-six years old and he is alive and he shouldn't be. He doesn't understand this world. Maybe he's dead. Maybe he's almost dead and he's dreaming this world. This world that is too sharp and too bright and too loud even after too many drinks. This world where Steve is... _that_... and people defer to him, people listen to him. This world where a knockout in red looks at Steve like she'd like to eat him up.

He looks at her--Agent Carter--and he looks at Steve--Captain America--and it's ten thousand times worse right now than it ever was when he stood off pretending he didn't see what was going on between Steve and Rebecca. He knew what to do then. He has no idea what to do now. He thinks he should be happy for Steve. Steve finally has everything he ever wanted. He has everything Bucky ever wanted for him (no, that's not right, because _everything he ever wanted for Steve_ included himself).

But Bucky doesn't know where he fits. He doesn't know if he fits at all.

He thinks the more merciful end would have been the one on Zola's table.

Now everything is all wrong, not just him. And he's more wrong than he ever was before.

 

 

_2015_

 

Against all odds, against all common sense and reasonable expectations, Bucky is ninety-eight years old and feels like he's maybe thirty years old, maybe. He remembers thinking how wrong everything was in the winter of 1943 and now he knows--that was nothing. Things are so much worse now. Here. Sometimes he thinks this is a new place not so much as a new time, and he's here and he's trying, he's healthy and mostly whole and he's making amends (and it does not matter how many times Steve says he doesn't have to make amends--he will make them all the same, for himself, not for anyone else, because James Buchanan Barnes is a soldier, not a killer, not an assassin, not a puppet, not a weapon, he is his own man and he chooses to do the good he can). And he's living in a world where _he is not wrong_.

It's okay to be all wrong. They've even got a bunch of fancy, positive names for all the ways he's wrong.

Bucky won't use those words.

They're in a bar, he and Steve are, one equidistant from each of their apartments. They're sitting together at a table too small for both of them now, hands on beer bottles, not looking at each other because they're men and they may be friends but _they're not like that_ and the Dodgers--who are in California now, _Steve, can you believe it?_ \--are on big flat television screens in opposite corners of the room beating the Giants.

Baseball is better, Bucky thinks. Brooklyn may not have a team anymore, but baseball is better.

"She's something else," Steve is saying, and Bucky has had long practice with the way his heart climbs into his throat.

Some things haven't changed. Lots of things have, but nowhere near as many as people these days like to think, and some things that haven't changed are things Bucky is intimately familiar with.

"Not for you she isn't," he hears himself saying, voice light, teasing. "She's exactly your type." He sips his beer. Beer is always cold these days. "How many times has she shot you?"

Steve snorts. But he still looks a little sick, with love or something else Bucky isn't sure he recognizes. He thought Steve was in love with Peggy, back during the war. As much as anyone can be in love during a war.

"We're going out to the Catskills this weekend," he says.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. "Have you ever even been away with a woman?"

Steve shrugs. "She thinks we need some time alone. Together."

"What do _you_ think?"

Steve frowns.

Bucky wants to kiss the frown off his face.

Instead, he finishes his beer and flirts back when the pretty waitress brings him another.

 

 

_2016_

 

Bucky likes Sharon but he doesn't like what Steve and Sharon do to each other. He barely recognizes Steve when they're together--and they're not-together as much as they're together, a fact that makes Bucky's head spin and his heart ache. When they were young, when they were not men nearly one hundred years old, even before their war, Steve was angry. He had good reasons, Bucky thought then and still thinks now, but that didn't change how he longed to ease that. He wanted Steve to see that things weren't so bad, that they could be so much worse.

With Sharon, things are a kind of worse.

It's a Friday night and Bucky is home, cooking dinner for himself and thinking about the next movie in his Netflix queue. He's off until he gets the call and he likes the mundane of feeding himself and lazing on the couch all night. What he does not like is the way Steve storms in, sweaty, still dressed in his gym clothes, face dark as an angry sky. Bucky glances once over his shoulder at him, then turns back to dinner in the skillet on the stove.

"The fuck is wrong with you?"

Steve grunts, dropping his bag and yanking open the refrigerator.

Bucky watches him from the corner of his eye. "Don't you have a date tonight?" He knows full well Steve has a date tonight, he knows it's with Sharon, and he knows what they were planning.

It's easier to keep tabs on Steve now than it was back then. He's better at it even when he doesn't mean to be.

"I did." Steve's voice is small and tight.

Bucky knows what it means and he adds one to the _number of times Steve and Sharon have broken up_ count in his head. They're up to four. He stirs the mess of pasta and vegetables and chicken in the skillet and hides his own bitter smile and asks, "What was it this time?"

"I don't know." Steve sounds plaintive, frustrated. He slams his fist into the cabinet door, splintering it. "Damn it!"

Bucky stifles a sigh. Steve's in a mood--there goes his quiet night. He leaves the wooden spoon on the counter and finds the whiskey in the cabinet and pours three fingers into a tumbler. He hands it over to Steve.

Steve, who takes it even as he grumbles, "It's not going to help."

"It's not supposed to. It's supposed to distract you so I can clean up." Bucky nods to the splintered cabinet door.

Steve destroys at least one every time he and Sharon have a fight.

This time, he at least has the grace to look sheepish. "Sorry, Buck."

Bucky takes a screwdriver from a drawer, shaking his head. His heart breaks every time a cabinet door has to come down, and not because he gives a damn about the state of the kitchen. "Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Steve?" he asks softly.

Steve slumps against the edge of the counter. "Doing what?"

Bucky focuses on unscrewing the hinges, refusing to look at Steve, refusing to show Steve what he's thinking, what he wants to say. "Sharon. Why do you keep doing this to yourself?"

"What else am I supposed to do?"

He can think of a lot of other things Steve could do. Things that wouldn't make him so miserable. Things that wouldn't seem so much like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. "She's not what you want." He says it calmly, matter-of-fact, a truth.

Sharon is great, but she's too much like Steve. Too stubborn, too righteous, too godawful at compromise.

Steve laughs like it hurts. "I don't get what I want."

Bucky glances over. "What do you want?"

Because in all the years they've known each other, Bucky has never once asked that question.

Steve stares down into his drink. "It doesn't matter," he says, voice soft now and defeated. He shakes his head and he looks up, and Bucky sees that his eyes are red-rimmed and he realizes with a shock that Steve looks lost. Then he does that thing that always makes Bucky's gut twist and his heart fall and he gives that half-smile that means he's sad beyond words. "I'm going to shower. You wanna go out tonight? Let's go out." He swallows the rest of his drink and sets the glass on the counter. "Let's go out," he says again, to himself, to the walls.

It's more than Bucky can take. He is ninety-nine years old and he has been through too much to let this go. "Steve--" His hand shoots out as Steve passes.

Steve looks at him then and Bucky feels trapped, but, hell. He's been worse off. He commits. He fists his hand in the front of Steve's shirt and he moves until he's planted right in front of Steve.

Quietly, he says once more, "What do you want?"

"It doesn't matter, because I won't get it." Steve looks at him with those big sad eyes and Bucky has a revelation.

He pulls Steve in for a kiss. It's tentative, he's not sure it's welcome--maybe he's reading this all wrong.

Steve sags into him, gratitude and want rolling off of him in waves, before he seems to remember himself and jerks back. "Wait--"

Bucky breathes out. "I think I've waited long enough, pal."

Steve shudders. "I couldn't take this from you, Bucky. Not from you."

Bucky slides his hand from the center of Steve's chest up, up, slowly, until he can wrap it around the back of Steve's neck and hold him steady. "Couldn't take what?" he asks, afraid.

"Your pity."

Bucky snorts, relief flooding through him, chased by heat. "You think this is pity? I've wanted your punk ass since your balls dropped." He laughs at himself. Maybe this isn't about him. Maybe this is about Steve. Maybe Steve's just trying to be nice. He drops his hand and takes a step back. Maybe he's just an idiot. "But, yeah, you're right. It's pity." He looks at Steve and tries not to feel like the sadness is going to crush him. "I like Sharon, man, but you deserve someone who doesn't make you a bully."

"She doesn't."

Bucky's heart is folding in on itself. He feels hollow and his head hurts. "Whatever you say." He straightens his shoulders. "You want to go out? We'll go out. Where do you want to go?"

"Wait--" Steve breathes in. "Just wait."

Bucky pauses.

Steve's big hands frame his face and he kisses him again. Slow. Less tentative. There's restrained hunger and simmering want in the kiss and Bucky feels like his heart is breaking all over again.

"You mean it?" Steve breathes against his lips.

Bucky shrugs. He tries not to swallow hard. "Never say things I don't mean. You know that."

Steve stares into his eyes, unflinching. Bucky wants to hide and knows he shouldn't. Not if he wants this.

He wants this.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

He snorts. "Why didn't _you_?"

Steve runs his fingers through Bucky's hair, smoothing it back from his face. He doesn't answer, just says, "Does Sharon really make me a bully?"

"You're a fucking horse's ass on a good day, Steve." Bucky turns into Steve's hand and closes his eyes, savoring the warmth, the feel of Steve's callouses catching on his stubble. "Around Sharon, I barely recognize you."

"She said the same thing."

"She's smart."

"Smarter than me."

"Yeah, but that's not tough."

Steve looks wounded.

Bucky bites his tongue. Maybe right now isn't the time for their usual insults. "Sorry."

"I don't want to be a bully."

"Nobody wants you to be a bully. Doesn't suit you."

Steve strokes his thumbs over Bucky's skin. "I'm not happy with her," he admits.

"No shit."

Steve gives him that disapproving look. He opens his mouth to say something again, shakes his head, and leans in.

It's another kiss, slow and long and sweet and deep.

Bucky holds his waist and leans into the kiss. He feels like he's falling again.

 


End file.
